Poetry, Art, Medicine & Society

Early Sunday Morning

After Hopper

Brick apartments with a shade or cloned pair
Of blank curtains, the middle dark between them
Above a short row of storefronts, no perspective,
Everything near, and the empty street nearer—
Only the light that touches them appears
At all unique, sidelong and full of bias,
Intense in its calm attention to a place
No one would visit unless he lived there.
But you see no one, which forces you to be
That person who admires the lucidity
Of an ungodly hour, the world embellished
By removing distraction. It’s this the paperboy
Bicycles past, what the tired nurse or night
Watchman sees coming home, nothing abstract,
No drama beyond the understanding of light,
Which, merciless, yet just, falls upon the hydrant,
The barber pole, with as much indifference
As it might an odalisque, a wheat field. The shops
Will sleep all day with their windows black. In art
Nothing happens, maybe this hard enough,
Yet the aura of possibility hangs like a vow
That comes from within, a stubborn denial
Of a flat on view so limited and limiting
It must be mood coloring your expectations,
Not just air the same shade as marigolds.
Their absence blooms from them in the way you face
Your hands, your own body straight up, no companionship
To dilute your thoughts, the long shadowed chances.
This is life which consists of one city block,
Happy brooding, loneliness you love
Because you have plans that may finally go right
Beneath the plain old sky that isn’t poetic
Pap, religious diatribe, but clear and real and bright.

—David Moolten

Note: This new poem is a response to a prompt to “mash” together material from two other poems. I wound up “mashing” just two lines, which I altered slightly as I drafted the poem.

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David Moolten

About me: I'm the author of three books of poetry, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005), and Primitive Mood, which won the 2009 T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press, and was published in 2009.

I'm also a physician specializing in transfusion medicine, and I live, write and practice in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Audio Files

'Cuda(Originally appeared in The Kenyon Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright(Originally appeared in The Southern Review)

Ode For Orville And Wilbur Wright

I don't yearn for their steep excursion
Into fame and fortune, for it had
The usual price, and Orville died bitter
And Wilbur died young. I envy them
Only the slender and empty distance they left
Between them and a seaside's grassy bluffs
In mild December, the frail ingenuity
Of dreams, a lifetime's hopes made of string and cloth
And a little puttering motor that might have run
A lawn mower if the brothers had put their minds
To one first. For dumb exhilaration, nothing --
Not an F-16 thundering from its base
In Turkey nor my redeye circling O'Hare --
Comes close to what they must have felt
For less than a shaking, clattering minute
Clearing all attachment to the world
Of dickering and petty concerns: for some
No other heaven. So I take note of them
As they took notes from the lonely buzzard, obsessed
To the point of love with the ghostly air
And the small fluttering things that wandered
Through it. Eccentric but never flighty,
Bookish but not above nicking their hands
In bicycle shops and basements, they lived
With their sister and tinkered with the future.
Propelled by ambition, the mandate
It invents, they still heeded the laws
Of nature, trimmed needless weight, saw everything
Even themselves as burden, determined
Not to crash and burn. Sheer will launched them,
Good will, because those first forty yards
Skimming shale and reeds were for everyone.
Face down between the struts, staring at the ground
As it blurred past, they failed like anyone
To grasp the implications. But legs flailing
They hung on, buoyed by never and almost
And then just barely. I could do worse
Than their brief rapture, their common sense
Of purpose. Or I could, if only
For a moment, exalt them, go along
With the jury-rigged myth, the quaint
Contrivance that lets them rise above it all.

Readers of the Literature, Art & Medicine Blog may remember me as the first Artist in Residence at NYUSOM, or as the creator and teacher of Art & Anatomy in the Master Scholars Program in Humanistic Medicine [previously] [interview]. You may have seen my own or my students' work on […]

In a small off-Broadway theatre in NYC, it’s opening night for a new play, The Absolutely, Positively, Forget About it, Last Night at Von Dahm’s Sports Bar, Wing Hut and Karaoke Palace. The actors run through their lines one last time before heading to wardrobe, the props are on set, […]

about.me

Head & Feet In The Clouds

O.k. so here goes. I'm a poet, a very fledgling filmmaker, and a doctor, pretty much in that order (except when it comes to keeping the lights on).

My most recent book of verse, Primitive Mood, won the T.S. Eliot Prize from Truman State University Press and was published in 2009. I also have two previous books, Plums & Ashes (Northeastern University, 1994), which won the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, and Especially Then (David Robert Books, 2005). My poems have appeared in magazines too (such as Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southwest Review, and Epoch, among others). Last but not least, I've had the good luck to see work in anthologies, including a Pushcart Prize.

The movie list is short, though I hope to make it longer...I've finished one: "Astronaut Goes From Migrant Fields To Outer Space," a short film featuring video, animation, and spoken word, which screened nationally at festivals.

My medical specialty is transfusion medicine, which means I'm an expert on the collection, storage and use of blood (and associated therapies and technologies) for patient care.

Well you’v e certainly captured the bleak urban mood of Hopper’s painting brilliantly.This poem is really worthy of a studied and erudite response. There is so much to think about.Reminiscent of Keats ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’ in art nothing happens,the moment is frozen. Also the reference to the Odalisque a lit white expanse like the nude.Apart from the art references,
the loneliness and very quiet calm desperation of Hopper’s solitary figure is so successfully translated into literature through this poem.. Beautiful
images of shades of marigold,blackened windows in the ghost mood of a dead Sunday morning…Just wonderful…think I’ll snap my quill in half and head off back to the music world.Too good David!

Only the light that touches them appears
At all unique, sidelong and full of bias

and

It’s this the paperboy
Bicycles past, what the tired nurse or night
Watchman sees coming home

which reminds me of my hospital chaplaincy year, and what it felt like to be driving home after an all-night shift. The quality of light in those sleep-deprived moments was unlike anything else I know.

Thank you so much. I also have spent “all nighters” (during my training) in the hospital, and think of my early morning returns home as among the more rewarding aspects. Even with no sleep, there can be such clarity.

I’ve come to look forward to your interpretations. It is like Hopper. I was so involved in all that light and architecture, that i almost missed that you were only comparing man and house. I’d pick out the lines I like, but there are too many

There is a very flat two dimensional world in the essence of this poem that you have very deftly created. You speak about a flat on view being limiting but your flat on view is expansive and rich in its interpretations and expression. Thank you.

I appreciate your insight and generous take. There is something very nifty about how painters create dimension in their work, and with modern painters like Hopper, sometimes that dimension is subtle, more metaphoric than overt.

Nothing happens, maybe this hard enough,
Yet the aura of possibility hangs like a vow
That comes from within, a stubborn denial
Of a flat on view so limited and limiting
It must be mood coloring your expectations,
Not just air the same shade as marigolds

This poem may be influenced by a Hopper painting however I believe you have been on Spruce Street near Society Hill in the wee hours of morning. There is a moody sensuality in the work. I really liked: Of blank curtains, the middle dark between them. I have often wondered what hid in the middle dark. ‘It must be mood coloring your expectations’, what a great line. As I read the poem and came across its complement to its narrative I found myself several times mentally saying, “Gosh, that verse could be the beginning of a poem.” David, I like your work, it brings me joy. Thanks,
Regards,
DH

You’re right, I have been out and about early. And those townhouses definitely have a compact bittersweet magnificence about them in slanted light. I’ve always been a morning person. It’s my best time for writing. The house quiet, except for perhaps our cats, none of the day used up yet, everything still an option.

This brought back a lot of memories of walking down streets where the buildings, though real and lived in, looked like facades. You take what could be seen as simply a trick of light and perspective and give it thematic importance.

Thank you Elizabeth. I appreciate your praise. Hopper is a quite nifty artist to write about, sorrowful but stingy about letting you know, and once in a while, as in this painting, there’s a little optimism and hope.

This definitely evokes the street scenes in my particular environment. There are a number of really lovely lines, including “Yet the aura of possibility hangs like a vow” and the final two. I fully embrace that sentiment.

Oh, what an unflinching, unforgettable poem! As skillful ekphrasis, the poem takes a variety of approaches: it describes what is present in the painting (apts., curtains, stores, etc.); it notes what is absent from the painting (no one, no perspective); it imagines what else might fit into the painting (paper boy, etc.); it shifts to the observer’s interior reverie. The metaphoric power of the poem comes from its consideration of sun “light” on Sun-day — ungodly, merciless but just, real and bright, indifferent. I love the night watchman detail (perhaps a nod to Rembrandt’s use of light?). This poem is a meditation on art which is just as solemn as other kinds of Sunday meditations. (I think Hopper’s works have inspired more poems in English than another other artist’s work. Would you consider submitting this to “Ekphrasis” journal?)

Thank you for your most generous and extended commentary on my poem. I’ve always loved Hopper’s work, and he’s so stingy usually, that when he lets a little hope creep into his color scheme, as in this painting, it might as well be an avalanche.